— It didn't take me long to say “yes” when my boss asked me to move to Central Texas and take over a region for the Saltgrass Steak House.   As a matter of fact, I had already told him I wanted to locate there before he even asked me.  

You see, I had grown up living in Houston and my family would visit the Hill Country to go climbing on Enchanted Rock, hunting in and around Llano County and camping at Inks Lake.  Central Texas was already in my blood.  As we all got older it changed to swimming at Schlitterbahn, visiting friends in college at UT and at Southwest Texas State and visiting my brother in San Antonio. One thing never changed, and that was the hunting trips.

Once we knew we were moving here, we had a difficult decision to make when it came to where to live.   San Antonio and Austin were still too big for me and too much like Houston.   I stopped to check out San Marcos which was halfway between my stores located in Austin and San Antonio.   A local real estate agent gave me a long list of houses and we started looking.   The very first house my wife and I looked at is the one we fell in love with and we still live there to this day.   

Over the next six years we did what everyone else does with young children in the house.  Our lives revolved around the basics: work, school, daycare, basketball, volleyball, soccer and just simply trying to keep up.   We met most of our new friends through the activities of our kids.  

We lived in San Marcos for seven years before my boss asked me another fateful question, “How do you think a Saltgrass would do in San Marcos where the Joe's Crab Shack is?”  Of course I told him I thought it would do great.    We opened the local Saltgrass Steak House a little over two years ago and it has been very successful and the local community has been very good to us.  

It became apparent, very early on, that getting involved in the community and extensive networking and advertising were going to be very important at this location.   This was not like opening a restaurant in the middle of Houston with two and a half million guests ready to dine at your restaurant. It started off just by inviting and seeing the friends we had made through our personal lives over the past seven years.  

Most of those friends worked, lived or owned businesses in the area.   We tried ideas and marketing tools that our company uses at every location and they all worked to an extent. 

But our first big break came when a friend of mine asked us to bid on catering the weekly meeting for the Rotary Club every Friday at our location.  We started hosting that meeting more than two years ago and everything has seemed to blossom from that point forward.

The folks that I saw at the Rotary Meetings were some of the same people I had seen at my kids sporting and school events.   Those people were also the same people that I had met through the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce.   The members of the chamber were the same people I would see at the grocery store, the hardware store, the high school and at the college.  

The small town feel is one of things that's so great about San Marcos – you can't go anywhere without running into someone you know.   All of these acquaintances and businesses have a need or a desire to go to a nice restaurant, take their family, friends or clients to dinner, have an event catered or need a meeting room.

These relationships built over time, both personal and professional, are what made it very easy for me to say “yes” when Chamber Chair-elect, Joel Williams, asked me to serve as a board member for the San Marcos Chamber.   My experience with the chamber has really made my personal and professional life blossom even more.   It has opened new doors of opportunity that have been very advantageous.   I have only reached the tip of the iceberg so far as to where my involvement in the chamber can take me.

The moral of the story is, say “yes” and get involved, not just in the chamber and what it can do for you, but get involved in everything our great community has to offer.  

Go to a sporting event, the library, the activity center, join a club, go to your kid's events, visit the high school or Texas State, a city council meeting, float the river or go to Sights & Sounds during the holidays.  

The relationships we form through these experiences will form our success in our personal and professional lives.   People do business with people, not corporations.   Get out and create your new clients and friends.    

The San Marcos Chamber of Commerce is focused on business, focused on you. Check us out on the Web at www.sanmarcostexas.com.